As he passed the door to the rooms of the Ladies’ Auxiliary Society he noticed that it was ajar, and saw through the crack that there was a sleeping figure on the floor near the stove—­a boy about sixteen.  When Jehiel stepped softly in and looked at him, the likeness to his own sister struck him even before he recognized the lad as his great-nephew, the son of the child he had helped his sister to care for all those years ago.

“Why, what’s Nathaniel doin’ here?” he asked himself, in surprise.  He had not known that the boy was even in town, for he had been on the point of leaving to enlist in the navy.  Family matters could not have detained him, for he was quite alone in the world since both his father and his mother were dead and his stepmother had married again.  Under his great-uncle’s gaze the lad opened his eyes with a start and sat up confused.

“What’s the matter with you, Nat?” asked the older man not ungently.  He was thinking that probably he had looked like that at sixteen.  The boy stared at him a moment, and then, leaning his head on a chair, he began to cry.  Sitting thus, crouched together, he looked like a child.

“Why, Natty, what’s the trouble?” asked his uncle alarmed.

“I came off here because I couldn’t hold in at home any longer,” answered the other between sobs.  “You see I can’t go away.  Her husband treats her so bad she can’t stay with him.  I don’t blame her, she says she just can’t! So she’s come back and she ain’t well, and she’s goin’ to have a baby, and I’ve got to stay and support her.  Mr. Bradley’s offered me a place in his store and I’ve got to give up goin’ to the navy.”  He suddenly realized the unmanliness of his attitude, rose to his feet, closing his lips tightly, and faced the older man with a resolute expression of despair in his young eyes.

“Uncle Jehiel, it does seem to me I can’t have it so!  All my life I’ve looked forward to bein’ a sailor and goin’ around the world, and all.  I just hate the valley and the mountains!  But I guess I got to stay.  She’s only my stepmother, I know, but she was always awful good to me, and she hasn’t got anybody else to look after her.”

His voice broke, and he put his arm up in a crook over his face.  “But it’s awful hard!  I feel like a bird that’s got caught in a snare.”

His uncle had grown very pale during this speech, and at the last words he recoiled with an exclamation of horror.  There was a silence in which he looked at his nephew with the wide eyes of a man who sees a specter.  Then he turned away into the furnace-room, and picking up his lunch-box brought it back.  “Here, you,” he said roughly, “part of what’s troublin’ you is that you ain’t had any breakfast.  You eat this and you’ll feel better.  I’ll be back in a minute.”

He went away blindly into the darkest part of the cellar.  It was very black there, but his eyes stared wide before him.  It was very cold, but drops of sweat stood on his forehead as if he were in the hay-field.  He was alone, but his lips moved from time to time, and once he called out in some loud, stifled exclamation which resounded hollowly in the vault-like place.  He was there a long time.